Giving a presentation is a powerful way to communicate a range of information to an audience. Presentations can vary from giving a product demonstration, for example Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone™, to conducting an online training session for remotely located users, to reviewing the latest quarterly report at a board of directors meeting. In such environments, visual elements can improve how information is communicated to attendees of the presentation. For example, a pie chart can quickly communicate how a company's revenue is generated (e.g., by division, product, etc).
One way to provide visual elements for a presentation is to use a computer application such as Microsoft PowerPoint™, in which a series of slides can be presented, or WebEx™ or Microsoft Live Meeting, which provide collaborative web conferencing capabilities. These types of programs allow the presenter to share visual elements of the presentation with the audience.
As an example, in a board meeting environment, a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of a company may present a report regarding the company's financials. This report may be “shared” or displayed to other attending board members. During the presentation sections of the report are displayed in accordance with how the presenter presents the report.
Traditionally, sharing the presenter's display with the audience was accomplished by: 1) sharing a desktop or document; or 2) locating all of the attendees in the same room with a projection screen (or a video camera).
For the first case, a shared desktop or document may be accomplished by capturing an image (e.g., a bitmap) from the perspective of the presenter, compressing the captured image, and transmitting the compressed image to other attendees. However, this compression technique can require a large amount of network resources to effectively “share” the presentation with other users because multiple images per second may be needed to provide an acceptable picture to the remote users. Further, in certain cases, such network resources may not be available. For example, a board member may be “attending” a presentation and watching via a tablet device that is connected over a cellular connection (e.g., a 3G connection).
In the second case, locating everyone in the same room (or broadcasting the presentation with a video camera) can be effective in certain cases. However, in an ever increasing mobile world where users are located remotely from one another, such a setup is not always possible. Furthermore, when attendees are located within the same conference room, each person usually does not have their own view of the presentation. For certain attendees this can be problematic as traditional note taking with a pad of paper may be difficult because linking the notes to particular portions of a presentation at a later time is time consuming or difficult.
One way in which attendees address this problem is by printing out physical copies of the document and then making notes or annotations in the margins while the presenter gives the presentation. However, this type of solution may not be an arrangement is not always desirable or possible. For example, the discussed documents may be complex and lengthy. Also, creating physical copies of the documents or presentation for each person can be wasteful. Furthermore, the attendees in the presentation may not have the capability to create physical copies (e.g., because they are remotely located).
Moreover, in both of the above cases, there may be instances in which sharing exactly the same view of the presentation is undesirable. For example, a board member may want to study a particular chart in a document for longer than the presenter discusses the chart (e.g., longer than the presenter remains on that slide or page).
In view of these and other problems, there exists a need for technical improvements in the presentation technology art.